Book Overview
The house on Mango Street was a story that revolved around a girl named Esperanza. The environment centers on the Latin culture and so there may be scenes and passages that are specific to people living in Latinized places. Esperanza, throughout the text showed behaviors that were very predictable. This paper will focus more on the feminine side of the story like what it means to be a woman during the setting of the story and what resulted from Esperanza’s identity and decisions.
Sexuality and Other Central Themes
Since the book was actually composed of vignettes that individually, could look like different scenes or stories, there were a lot of issues that were tackled and a significant number of those issues are issues about sexuality. This could be considered as one of the significant themes being talked about because women are generally treated as inferior beings than that of men and this is actually true up until now.
Another theme that is evident in the story was Esperanza’s eagerness to get out of the House on Mango Street. She treated that house simply as a place where she and her family could love. It was also stated in the book how Esperanza disliked the looks of their living place because it didn’t even looked anywhere near the house that her parents promised her. For her, it was just like a four-cornered quarter with a more terrifying outside environment.
Marin and Esperanza
Marin was one of characters in the story who became Esperanza’s first friends. Compared to Esperanza, Marin, a female, has a kind of elevated personality or something that could be classified as extremes. Marin makes money by selling cosmetic products and she is not really that rich at all. She also carried with her a “bad girl” impression because of two things. First is because she has a loose sexuality. She is so open-minded when it comes to things about sexuality. Enlightened readers could basically sense her being like that through her statements that could be found in the vignettes of the book.
Second is because she is a cigarette user. However, the surprising fact about this is that Esperanza still looks up to her as a friend despite her being like that. In a patriarchal society, women with a loose sexuality and vices are perceived as inferior.
Women as free souls
Throughout the story, Esperanza met different individuals who seem to have tough problems and they have their being a woman to blame. Upon reviewing how vignettes of the book flow, it became clear that Esperanza, considering her gender, was actually one of the freest characters.
She met Rosa Vargas, woman who has a significant number of children to rise. Raising children is indeed a time-consuming task. There always has to be adjustments and in the end, Rosa cannot find the time to do anything for herself anymore. An almost the same situation trapped Esperanza’s another friend, Alicia. When Alicia’s mother died, she became in charge of cooking and taking care of her siblings, being the eldest. A husband duty then crippled Esperanza’s other friends, Rafaela and Minerva. These are some of the most common issues that most women consider curses in life. It remains a question however why they could continue living in that situation when they can simply break away from their responsibilities and live a free life.
What it means to be women in the House on Mango Street?
It is exactly obvious how badly women are treated in the environment where Esperanza grew in. However, despite all of those negativities, Esperanza still managed to experience life-changing awakenings and realizations and she was able to achieve that with the help of her friend, Marin. Upon looking at Esperanza’s personality, I came to a conclusion that one of man’s greatest weaknesses is a woman. Through the power of the high-heeled shoes that she and Marin wore while they were on the street, it became clear to her how strong the power of being adolescent woman was. Also, she learned that living in a patriarchal society (evident because of the situations of her other friends), does not automatically degrade the qualities of a woman; it just denies that women have power over men and that is possible when the subject is changed into topics like sexuality, intimacy, romance, sensuality. It is indeed possible for Esperanza to use such power she gained from men’s weakness but that could be a very impractical way to escape her current situation because she already realized that doing so would be morally wrong. She came to be awakened by this thought when she began to feel affection and moral responsibility towards the people in their community. Women plays a significant role in the society and it has become evident in the novel how they have the power to turn the fake patriarchal society into something different and more favorable for women.
References
Cisneros, Sandra. THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET. Vintage, 1991. Print.
